Agreed, he was my MOTM behind Shaw
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Agreed, he was my MOTM behind Shaw
Had a couple of ugly passes who got us into trouble, but other than that i thought he was superb.
I love Ander, but I voted for Luke as MOTM.
I'm sorry but this is just not fair. Herrera was one of our, if not our best, players today and you are almost solely focusing on his negatives, making it out as though he just had a 'decent' game. Herrera misplaced very few balls (with a passing accuracy of 95%) and most certainly did not give the ball away in dangerous areas several times. I can recall a mishit long ball to Mata which was intercepted and another which I can't quite recall.
On the other hand, Fellaini was anonymous and was shut down today. You do make some good points there about how we could have better exploited the potential tactical advantage we could have had, with the attention Fellaini received from Chelsea, instead of the usual 'he was shite today' posts. However, you are just focusing on the positives for Fellaini here and ignoring the fact that he was anonymous for large periods of the game and doing just the opposite for Herrera.
I told you that he already played that role, but he is a lot better in the final third, he really is an attacking player who can defend.
Thought he did a really good job today, considering he's not a natural holding midfielder and that Chelsea had a sea of players running towards him when they countered us.
Well said, at least he tries to do things and doesn't just wave his arms about if he loses a ball, he goes and gets it back. He did a good job today. He doesn't let people bully him, we have had too many of them recently.
He can do a job sitting deep, but it isn't his strength. Just unfortunate Carrick injured and Blind nobbled.
Did well today. Was comfortably our best midfielder.
Agreed, although I liked having a more mobile person in that position he put us under pressure a few times with misplaced passes as he does take more risks then Carrick/blind.
I don't think his passing accuracy really matters when the whole team acquired statistics close to his; it was a good performance and definitely not his best. That pass where he nearly assisted their second was horrible and his defending for their first wasn't great. However, for a guy who's playing there for the first time, in the EPL, it was a performance for which he should be proud of. His dive was magnificent, and deserved a penalty.
I would rather not get into discussing Fellaini in this thread, as it is not the Fellaini thread - but the difference for me is that Chelsea specifically set out to counter Fellaini. That is a circumstance in which I can excuse a player if they dont turn in a fantastic performance - because it should create space and opportunities for the rest of the team to capitalise on.
As for Herrera, I am just trying to put a bit of perspective into things. I dont think he was one of our best players today, nor was he one of our worst.
Our top two today for me were Shaw and McNair - after that there were no standout candidates, I felt that Young, Smalling, Rooney and Herrera all put in decent performances and there was nothing between them (as far as ratings etc go).
You can argue that Herrera was playing an unnatural position for him and I agree - I have said several times that he did better than I would have expected in a DM role. But again, he was one of those primarily at fault for Chelsea's goal and he got booked for diving which lost us the ball in a promising position. Herrera had the type of game that he normally has - unfortunately that means that when he gets caught in possession or similar, that it is in a more dangerous area than in his normal role.
I would like to point out that when we - as a team - end the game with 70% possession, and Chelsea put little-to-no pressure on the ball at any point, it really isnt that difficult or impressive to achieve a high pass completion stat. Again, not saying it was bad, just that a little context is needed.
So, well done Herrera - going into the game I was concerned that without Carrick or Blind, we would get overrun in midfield and get hammered. As it turns out, we didnt - part of that is due to Mourinho setting up to nullify Fellaini, which substantially weakened Chelsea's ball retention, but part of it is also because Herrera did a decent job of covering as a DM. He did better than I expected in that role (to be fair, I didnt expect him to be playing that role but rather Rooney), but MotM isnt based on which player exceeded expectations the most, but rather just the best performance.
Even, I, this woman obsessed with Herrera didn't give him MOTM. I gave it to Shaw, which maked it annoying that he was taken off the Blackett, who isn't a patch on him.
Decent game considering the job he had to do. Its a shame because I dont think Chelsea score that goal if Carrick is playing as he will fill in the hole where Hazard runs. I dont entirely blame Herrera for that because we had Valencia jogging back and then stopped trying to get back and we were caught by a lovely pass from Oscar (after a foul which wasnt given for some reason).
Yet all some people see are ''the two careless passes'', forgetting that we had chances that we should have taken to make the error meaningless in the bigger context. Those are MOTM stats and made even more special by the fact that he was out of position.
If Herrera was playing where he should be we might have actually scored as Rooney would have been up front.
I agree. Carrick and Blind both not playing (and even Jones) meant we had to bring both Herrera and Rooney back from where theyve been playing. This also made the triangles of Mata/Herrera/Valencia ineffective which meant we relied on the left which Mourinho had a plan for.
Herrera had a few stray passes but he was trying to force it when we were 1-0 and was in a deeper position (as opposed to being in the oppositions half which is a shame).
Agreed. Our biggest problem today (as I predicted unfortunately) was in having Falcao up front and not Rooney.
My proposed lineups before the game had Herrera in his normal position, and one of Valencia, Rafael or Fellaini at DM (relocating Fellaini once it became clear that Zouma was going to shadow him all day would have been a smart move by LVG I feel).
2 suicidal passes, otherwise very good.
Considering everything the referee let go in Chelsea's favour in a typical Stamford Bridge performance, I didn't mind Herrera trying either.
He did ok in the #6 role misplaced a couple of passes and he does not have same positional awareness as Carrick but other than that he was fine.
Said in another thread. It would.have been given if it was against United at OT with either Dean or Atkinson in charge.
Jose just negated Fellaini which stopped a lot of the effectiveness. If the others were playing in their correct positions it might not have mattered, unfortunately they weren't.
Chelsea aren't capable of scoring a goal that doesn't have a foul somewhere in the build up for a start.
He was but I think if he had bust a gut, he could have put some pressure on hazard as he was striking it. But ah well, it happens, players will get caught out of position in transition and we need other players to be smart enough to cover for them.
Fully agree with that. Ifs and Buts. I honestly dont think we lose if we play the same team as last week and would have had a better chance of winning. Will never know. Its just upto us now to finish the season strong, capture automatic CL for next season and then kick on
I am feeling optimistic for the future now. A few signings and cannot wait for next season.He was but I think if he had bust a gut, he could have put some pressure on hazard as he was striking it. But ah well, it happens, players will get caught out of position in transition and we need other players to be smart enough to cover for them.
Fully agree with that. Ifs and Buts. I honestly dont think we lose if we play the same team as last week and would have had a better chance of winning. Will never know. Its just upto us now to finish the season strong, capture automatic CL for next season and then kick on
Fair enough @Walrus . Guess we will have to agree to disagree on the level of Herrera's performance today.
He did well and the fact Louis van Gaal trusted him with the role might suggest he will give him a chance as the box to box player next season instead of signing a specialist for the role.
I did feel we lacked him in the 8 position, our left unit of Blind-Young-Fellaini was broken due to Blind's injury but Herrera's deeper role caused in my opinion Mata and Valencia to suffer also and in general slowed down our game.
I think had we another centre back available then it is possible McNair would have been used as a CDM making it a straight swap instead of playing both Rooney and Herrera out of position.
Louis van Gaal probably considered the option of Blackett or McNair in that position and the other as the centre back but it's always a difficult decision to take.
I did feel we lacked him in the 8 position, our left unit of Blind-Young-Fellaini was broken due to Blind's injury but Herrera's deeper role caused in my opinion Mata and Valencia to suffer also and in general slowed down our game.
I think had we another centre back available then it is possible McNair would have been used as a CDM making it a straight swap instead of playing both Rooney and Herrera out of position.
Louis van Gaal probably considered the option of Blackett or McNair in that position and the other as the centre back but it's always a difficult decision to take.
McNair started off as a midfielder early in his career I think, so he might have done a job there. We have just had too many injuries in the wrong places at the wrong time.
TBH, that's only hypothetical. I haven't seen referees having the guts to feck Chelsea over at Stamford Bridge really often (the Mark Clattenburg case in 2012 was a very rare case), but referees did screw us over at OT a number of times in the last few years.
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It probably would've been given if it was like in the 70th minute. Everyone just expected to see a last ditch attempt for a penalty to save the game in that situation, a 50/50 ball with him just getting there before Cahill. You see pens given for that all the time and I think Dean was expecting to see a dive and made his mind up before anything happened (of course, still was a bit of a dive and right decision, but it could have been different if circumstances were different and Dean didn't make his mind up before it happened).
6 for this kind of performance after you spent the entire season praising Fellaini for performances which were good but definitely not better than this on average? Yeah, you are not biased at all.
Which performance is better than another is a matter of opinion. Im not going to get drawn into a Fellaini vs Herrera battle, especially not in this thread.
Did you lose a bet or something? I think that's the third post I've seen tonight in which you point out your gender
As for Ander, bar one misplaced pass he was absolutely majestic for the first 30 minutes! Can't comment on the rest of the match unfortunately
Did you lose a bet or something? I think that's the third post I've seen tonight in which you point out your gender
She described herself as a woman. Should she have written 'man' just so you wouldn't think she was being too pointed about it?I don't have objections to it, I just found it curious for the reason I specified!
I don't have objections to it, I just found it curious for the reason I specified!
Fair enough. It's not really curious. Some places in the internet may mainly be blokes but that doesn't mean that anyone referring to themselves as anything else is doing it to make a point.
I wouldn't even have thought twice about it if I hadn't already seen it earlier tonight, which made it seem curious to me. It obviously wasn't the fact that she was a woman, because as far as I can tell they're hardly unicorns around here. Not that it matters one way or another!
Look, he wasn't all that great. Did some sloppy stuff and as the deepest midfielder those aren't welcome. Funny enough he also did some good stuff(the control when Drogba was hounding him down was fabulous). However his passing from deep was pretty much mediocre. In such a match we needed more, and pity he doesn't have the range of a carrick for example so wasn't able to build up our play as well. All those half a gazzilion passes are worthless if they are moving our team nowhere.
Something that's magnificent about him is how quickly he reads the play. He really is a quality front foot player who knows how to constantly dispossess the opposition midfielders, viera-like in that sense. Sadly for us though, on the back foot he lost his man and didn't even communicate to anyone to track him. Should've done better in that instant.
He's our future captain imo. Did you Guys see just how much directing he was doing out there? Constantly communicating with others, and generally handing out instructions, it was really great to see.
Something that's magnificent about him is how quickly he reads the play. He really is a quality front foot player who knows how to constantly dispossess the opposition midfielders, viera-like in that sense. Sadly for us though, on the back foot he lost his man and didn't even communicate to anyone to track him. Should've done better in that instant.
He's our future captain imo. Did you Guys see just how much directing he was doing out there? Constantly communicating with others, and generally handing out instructions, it was really great to see.
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